Axel, Bookstores, Clubs, Demyx
by january sunshine
Summary: Alphabet Series, Fic ABCD. Axel didn't know that one person he met at a nightclub could have such a big impact on his life. AkuDemy, implied Zemyx. For ShadowAili.


Regarding how I came up with this... even I don't know. I'm tempted to blame JereduLevenin, but I don't know... -shrug- She came up with Demyx's DJ name, though, so that goes to her. All charries and whatnot go to Nomura and Squeenix so don't sue me. (that's the disclaimer, FYI, Just so ya know, lmnop.)

This fic's writing style was inspired by **ShadowAili**, who wrote _Kisses_. Then I read **Dualism**'s _Look Away_ and talked to **Mentaru** and that's why the ending's sad. Okay?

**I dedicate this sad piece of fanfiction to ShadowAili, who I love dearly and wish to thank her for her lovely, long reviews of WM and to tell you all, read her fics! Zemyx pwnz, but, liek, this only implies that coupling...**

**Warning! _Character Death. And Angst._**

Have fun!

**Axel, Bookstores, Clubs, Demyx**

**by Darkness Princess**

**.xiii.ix.**

I first walked in on him when he was at the mixing booth. He had an infectious smile which seemed plastered on his face and a darling laugh which escaped every so often as he spoke into the microphone. I don't know what I saw in him, but I was interested. He was basically secluded once he put on the songs and remixed them, sometimes taking on the turn tables as he let out screeching to go along with the songs.

I really never saw a purpose in doing that, but he liked it. He always smiled when he worked.

We met somewhere around three that evening, once the club closed and he had finished packing up the devices. He didn't really know me, but I told him he was cool, and he said he liked making new friends.

Friends...

I stuck with the title anyway, and we ended up hanging out until he realized the time. He had to run home--literally, he took off _running_--and I watched while standing under the streetlight.

We met again every Saturday after that... then every Saturday and Wednesday. Neither of us were in college; he said he couldn't afford it, and I just didn't want to, so we wasted our late nights hanging out. I'd smoke in a corner of the club and he'd test the records.

It was a system. Once he was done, I'd put out my cig and he'd meet me by the back exit, and we'd walk through the line of streetclubs and chat. Once or twice, we stopped in a coffee shop and filled ourselves with a frappuccino or three, and we'd just chat.

Pointless chatter.

"So I says to the guy, 'as if', then I shot him!"

I glanced over at Demyx, who was staring at the same weird, pirate-looking guy we passed. We waited until we walked out of his distance before we both laughed our asses off at that. What a weird person... he was subject of our conversation for around an hour, before we settled on teasing a man with an X-shaped scar, a guy with sideburns, and the flowery, gay guy from around the corner--

"But he's straight, Axel."

I stared at Demyx. "Oh... you know him?"

"Yeah. He's dating my cousin."

Whoops. The conversations always got silent then, but we started up again once we found someone else to entertain ourselves with.

So pointless, though. We never built any real friendship. He'd mix tracks, I'd smoke, then we'd stay up two nights a week and talk about people. It was actually very satisfying...

"Axel, you look bored."

I don't know how long this had been continuing, but I was guessing weeks, possibly even months. We went to another coffee-shop that morning, and the clerk thought we were up to no good. It might've been our black attire, or our hair, but we didn't ask. We only sat down and ignored the suspicious looks as we drank our coffee.

"I'm not bored."

"You look it. Sleepy, maybe?"

I shook my head. I didn't get sleepy until around six on Thursdays. It never really bothered me... for a moment, I thought of all the things that didn't bother me, and called myself apathetic.

"Axel, are you single?"

That snapped me out of my stupor, and I blinked. "What?"

"Are you single?" he repeated calmly.

"You've got some whipped cream on your nose."

"And _you're_ avoiding the question," he said, matter-of-factly, and wiped the puffy substance from his nose. "Axel, really, though..."

I was looking back at my drink and prodding at it with my straw. "Perhaps..." I looked up to find Demyx giving me a dull look and sighed. "Okay, no. I'm single, completely."

"Then let's go out."

Sometimes, I wonder how that could even be possible. Demyx was DJ D'mix at Club C.O., and I had a job at a bookstore. A freakin' bookstore... He was somewhat exciting, somewhat popular, with friends who cared and people who worried the first night we hung out. I... had a roommate who's apathy was starting to rub off on me.

I don't even know how I agreed. I didn't date. I had never had a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, only cheap kisses and hookers trying to get into my pants, where I kept my wallet securely in the deep pockets. Demyx told me he liked not being fussed over, liked just hanging out.

He also said he wanted to kiss me.

When he mentioned wet dreams, I shut him up quickly.

We had a date a few days later. It was somewhere after midnight and we met in a movie theatre, and bought two tickets to a horror movie. He told me he personally hated horror movies, and I confessed that I was a tad squeamish on them myself, but we ignored it and went anyway. It was a waste of movie tickets.

If we wanted to just make out in a dark room with people screaming in the background, we could have gone to my apartment and put a scorpion in my roommate's bed.

Our Thursday and Saturday nights turned into Monday afternoons, Wednesday evenings, Thursday-All-Nights, Saturday-All-Nights, even some Sunday picnics.

I hated the beach.

He insisted on taking me, and after the crab worked its way where a hooker couldn't, I knew I could never sit in the sand normally again. The weather was nice, though. Nice and hot, and Demyx would take off his shirt and throw it on the ground and then run like a weirdo into the water. I'd sit--we brought towels and blankets--next to the lunch basket and watch him wave at me, then watch the wave personally dunk him.

I don't really hate the beach so much as I used to, but I frown and call it empty now. Or something. I don't know, don't care...

"I don't care, Demyx."

I always told him that when he asked my opinion during my smoking breaks. He always told me to stop, even at the beach, even at my house. My roommate was usually gone to work when Demyx came, so we had the apartment to ourselves for a while. But he kept asking me about movies, and I didn't really feel like going out.

"Axel, you're so simple. Do you want me to decide _everything_ for us?" he asked.

"Yeah."

I went back to smoking. That was the day when he plucked the cigarette from my lips and put it out, then pounced on me. It was weird, he never looked like the strong type, but he sure knew how to keep me down. I narrowed my eyes at him, and he told me that our kisses smelled like smoke a lot, then went on to tell me that I'd get lung cancer. I called him my mother and then picked a movie.

So I did care, when I wasn't smoking.

Of course, we didn't watch that movie, either. Roxas walked in on us in a very compromising position and left quickly, since I was... well, I was basically ramming Demyx into the couch, when Roxas saw us, and we couldn't just stop.

He didn't know I was gay.

Weird thing was, I didn't know either.

Demyx himself said he thought he was bisexual, but we called him "gay as me" and ended up going out for coffee.

For my birthday, I got a new lighter. I had a small party--Demyx insisted I celebrate turning twenty-two--and Roxas, Demyx, and Demyx's cousin--a real "sweet, considerate" girl named Larxene--were the only guests. Roxas gave me a tie, and Larxene gave me an edible thong.

"You can put that to good use, right?"

I ended up finishing that a week later. Demyx said it tasted like candy, when he tugged it out of the box, and we just ate it and watched a movie about dinosaurs. I don't even remember the title--we started trading sugar and saliva for a few hours, and Roxas flipped the lights on when we started getting noisy and ended up kicking Demyx out. Of course, I got mad at Mister Apathy later.

I started wondering if he was acting a bit jealous, but who knew. After all, Roxas was just a very uncaring individual.

Around a month later, Demyx took me to dinner and told me we had been friends for exactly one year. I was a bit stunned by the news, but I went to dinner anyway, and it was pretty okay. The food bothered me--not spicy enough, sadly--but we went to Demyx's house and hung out with a bunch of people I didn't know.

I wasn't sure what happened, but one day, we both snapped. Demyx got angry over something I said, and I yelled back at him. He was saying things about being total opposites. It was true. I was fire, he was water; red versus blue, really. Too bold for our own good, and maybe it just wasn't meant to be.

I'm not sure who broke up first, but we ended up deciding not to talk to each other.

A year, two weeks, and three days of a friendship. My sleep cycle ruined. My clubbing days tainted.

My love life back to square one.

I went back to just going to work and spending days at home eating spicy leftovers and seeing what odd concoction was left in the refrigerator. Roxas seemed back to normal, very apathetic and simple, eating plain tortilla chips on the couch while we stared with bored expressions at the television.

It was too boring for me. I went back to a club a week later, and stood near a lamp post, watching as Demyx headed out of the club, attached to a new person. A small, quiet girl, I figured; the face was covered on the right side by silver-grey hair. They didn't speak, but Demyx was smiling.

That infectious smile. Something was whispered, and Demyx found himself laughing, that darling little laugh, and they vanished from my sight.

Calling myself a stalker, I went to a coffee shop and ordered a frappuccino.

Four days later, at work, Demyx walked into the bookstore. I diverted my eyes as he looked around, handling the registers with a plain look. Every day, I walked into that store and wished to burn the books, almost even more since Demyx had entered. Not that I wanted him dead... but...

He didn't seem to be in pain at all.

No, he was never in pain. He was happy; I had caused him pain, and now that I wasn't, he was happy again.

He brought a book up to me and looked surprised when I asked him how his day was.

"You work here?" he asked.

"Yes, I do." I held out my hand. He handed me the books--he had two, said one was for his new friend, Zexion, who worked with him--and I scanned and forced them into a bag. "Are you in love, Demyx?"

Demyx looked at me plainly. "Love? Uh... no..." He glanced down. "Why?"

"Nothing," I said quickly, almost hotly, and told him the price.

"Look, Axel... I'm real sorry, okay?" Demyx said.

Why was he apologizing? I didn't understand, what had he done? We had both basically agreed on that break-up, and the friendship just went down with it. He had nothing to be sorry for. I'm just a difficult person. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

"Yeah, I do," he insisted. "You don't do anything anymore... I basically invaded your life, and you did stuff, and then we broke up and you don't."

"Right back to square one, then." I handed him his change.

"Axel... let's be friends still. Please?"

He looked up and I had to fight back the urge to get lost in those glowing emerald eyes of his. I nodded plainly. "Okay, I guess," I told him. "Fine..."

We shook on it, he hugged me across the counter, and I agreed to meet by the back door that Saturday.

I always figured maybe I didn't deserve the friendship. Fate put us together, and fate pulled us apart, so maybe fate wanted us to stay separated. I never really understood why, but I knew I couldn't cry, when Roxas called me Friday evening and told me that Demyx had been in a car accident. Side-swiped by a drunk driver, who crashed directly into the driver's side. He had no chance at all.

Fate was one cruel bitch.

Demyx's funeral was the Wednesday after that, and I was playing with the lighter he gave me through the entire ceremony. His little friend, Zexion--the same one with the half-hidden face, who was actually a boy--seemed very distraught, but more broken than sobbing. I felt bad for him. He looked like he could've made Demyx happier than I had, like Demyx could've made him smile and disrupted his life.

In some ways, I find myself blessed that I knew him. He let me know what it was like to have fun, to have friends, to be loved and cherished.

Sometimes, on Saturday nights, at exactly three in the morning, I stand outside the door DJ D'mix left from Club C.O. and hope he walks out, even though I know he never comes. Sometimes, during sunny afternoons, I go to the beach and watch the waves, imagining him going under and coming up with seaweed in his hair or a smile on his lips.

I thank him for teaching me to truly live, and I return home to my apartment with the thoughts of Demyx's infectious smile and darling laugh playing in my mind.

**.owari.**

Oh, the angst. And if I didn't want to cry so damn badly, I'd probably be happy I wrote it. So the beginning wasn't as great as I thought, but I don't think I killed the feeling in the end. ...damn... -sniffle-

**:Darkness Princess.**


End file.
